Canard du Jour: Antisemitism and the denial of Jewish self-determination

For a truly jaw-dropping admixture of sophistry and chutzpah it’s hard to top the claim made by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA’s) Working Definition of Antisemitism that, “Denying the Jewish people the right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor,” represents a dispositive indicator of anti-Semitism.

But because this assertion has now become an endlessly repeated Zionist talking-point; and because the U.S. State Department and Department of Education have adopted the IHRA’s “working definition,” while an Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, incorporating the IHRA standard, is currently pending in Congress; it’s imperative to analyze the various ways in which the IHRA’s deployment of “self-determination” is dangerously obfuscatory.

To begin with the most obvious: If denying Jews the “right of self-determination” is evidence of anti-Semitism, then what should we call denying the same right to those indigenes who have lived in Palestine for centuries? Netanyahu’s Likud party has never endorsed a sovereign Palestinian state. More revealingly, however, the vast majority of Israelis that has endorsed some kind of “two-state solution” has done so on for purely pragmatic reasons and not as a matter of “right.” Proponents have argued that two states would eliminate the “demographic threat” to Israel’s Jewish character. They’ve claimed it would reduce the level of violence and bring about peace. They’ve maintained that a Palestinian state would allow Israel to continue (sic) being democratic. What all these ostensibly “enlightened” arguments share in common is the presumption that Israel (which is to say, Israeli Jews) should, for self-interested reasons, grant some sort of state to (some) Palestinians. The idea that Palestinians have a “right” to a state, a right derived from the principle of national self-determination; and the acknowledgment that such a right, like all rights, is not for Israeli Jews (or for anyone) to “grant” or “negotiate;” has never been part of this discourse.

There’s a genuinely breathtaking hypocrisy in asserting that the denial of a Jewish right to “self-determination” is wickedly anti-Semitic” while the denial of the same right to Palestinians is justifiable or irrelevant.

But that’s only part of the problem.

According to the IHRA a tell-tale sign that the denial of a Jewish right to self-determination is an expression of nefarious anti-Semitism is provided when the denial is accompanied by the claim that the State of Israel is a “racist endeavor.” The logic here is cloudy, to say the least. There are some people who maintain that European, North African, Ethiopian, Yemeni, North American and Iraqi Jews did not and do not possess a “right of self-determination” in Palestine, yet deny that Zionism and the State of Israel is “a racist endeavor.” Are these people anti-Semites? There are other people who maintain that the Jews of the world do, in fact, have a right to national self-determination in Palestine, yet insist that the Zionist project has been consistently “racist” in practice. Are these people anti-Semites? And there are still other people who believe both that Israel has been racist and that the Jews of the world have no right to self-determination in Palestine. Is holding both these views more anti-Semitic than holding merely one of them? Why?

The truth is, that there is nothing about any of these opinions that is ipso facto anti-Semitic, if we understand anti-Semitism as it has always been understood, i.e., as inveterate Jew hatred and a conviction that Jews are congenitally wicked and universal threatening.

The claim that “peoples” have a “right of self-determination” is a relatively recent one. It was part of the new nationalist discourse that emerged in central and eastern Europe during the 19th century; it was given global currency by Woodrow Wilson and, in a different key, by Lenin, at the end of World War I; and it became more-or-less enshrined as a principle of international life after World War II. It was directly expressed, among other places, in U.N. General Assembly Resolution #2625 (1970), which stated that, “all peoples have the right freely to determine, without external interference, their political status and to pursue their economic, social and cultural development . . . and [that] every State has the duty to respect this right.”

While there is much that is inspirational about the idea of a “right” to national self-determination there is also much about the concept that is obscure and problematic. The most obvious problems involve (a) the difficulty of ascertaining what constitutes “a people; ” (b) the difficulty of determining the identity of those particular “peoples” that should legitimately exercise their putative “right;” and (c) the difficulty of specifying what it means for “a people” to possess its own state.

None of these problems is easily resolvable.

Should Basques be considered a “people” possessing a right to national self-determination? Should Bretons? Australian Aborigines? Lakota Sioux? African-Americans? How about Jews? What precisely makes them a “people” in the same way that, say, Norwegians are?

Is it anti-Basque or anti-Semitic to suggest that Basques or Jews are not “peoples” possessing a political-territorial “right” to self-determination? What criteria can and should be invoked to resolve these questions?

“Peoplehood” is not merely problematic in theory. The “right of self-determination” is honored only very selectively in the actual world of international politics. There are an estimated thirty-five million Kurds living in a contiguous area of present day Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria. Most of these people regard themselves as “Kurds,” None of them are currently able to exercise, de jure, their “right” of national self-determination. Nor are Tibetans. Nor are the Igbo of Nigeria. Nor are Chechens. And so on. What sort of label should we assign to those who oppose their doing so?

And then there’s the question: What does the exercise of the “right of self-determination” entail, in the sense of what does it “permit?” Should ethnic Poles, for example, be thought of as “owners” of Poland? Is it their state, such that Polish citizens who are not ethnic Poles are effectively “guests,” welcome or not, in the Polish national “household?” A few years ago, most thoughtful observers believed that this sort of volkisch, “integral” nationalism was a thing of the past. But no longer. As numerous commentators have observed, racial-nativist nationalism is frighteningly resurgent, not only in places like Hungary and Poland but also in Trump’s America. And as Eva Ilouz aptly observes, “Israel has, in fact, long pioneered the model to which these nations aspire: predicating citizenship on ethnic and religious affiliation” and vigorously combating “the ethnic, religious or racial dilution of their country by immigrants or universalist rights.”

Years, nay decades, before the Knesset’s passage of the noxious “Nation-State” law, the State of Israel considered itself, in Shlomo Sand’s words, “the collective property of the ‘Jews of the world,’ whether believers or not, rather than as an institutional expression of the democratic sovereignty of the body of citizens who live in it.” Yet in the strange moral universe of the IHRA, challenging the “Jewish people’s right” to exercise their “self-determination” in such a manifestly reactionary manner constitutes “delegitimization” – and “delegitimization” is evidence of anti-Semitism. The implications are truly bizarre. As Nathan Thrall has pointed out, by such a logic those who hold “the view that Israel should be a state for all its citizens, with equal rights for Jews and non-Jews” are ipso facto categorizable as delegitmizing anti-Semites, and “virtually all Palestinians (and a large proportion of ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel, who oppose Zionism for religious reasons) are [likewise] guilty of antisemitism, because they want Jews and Palestinians to continue living in Palestine but not within a Jewish state.”

The principle of national self-determination is clearly a vexing one. There are very few folks anywhere who are consistent in supporting its application. The Left has historically tended to promote internationalist principles and to look askance at most expressions of national irredentism or atomizing particularisms, yet has also enthusiastically endorsed anti-colonial struggles of national liberation in Algeria, Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique and Palestine. The Right has historically tended to support the perpetuation of white-dominated settler regimes, felt at home with nativist invocations of racial purity, and endorsed essentializing notions of ‘peoplehood,” but has also been uncomfortable with universalist Wilsonian idealism. During the 1990s, both Left and Right seemed rather flummoxed about how to respond to the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the U.S.S.R. and the consequent creation of a great number of new nation-states. Indeed, at the end of the day it appears that positions and attitudes concerning ‘”nationalism” and “national self-determination” are contextual, temporally fluid and not always consistent.

So what does any of this have to do with ‘anti-Semitism?’ Well, if there is a coherent line of thought in the current Zionist mantra it’s that the denial of “the Jewish people’s right to national self-determination” is anti-Semitic because it’s “selectively” (read: prejudicially) invoked. Jews are allegedly being treated differently than all other peoples. Israel is being “singled out” for special criticism, opprobrium, and delegitimization. And why? Anti-Semitism, 21st century style.

Leaving aside the fact that the all-too-familiar Zionist refrain about “singling out” has always been deeply problematic, not to say disingenuous (see my article, “Why Israel is ‘singled out'”). it’s pretty far-fetched to suggest that anyone, outside of Alan Dershowitz’s fever dreams, seriously holds the view that all the “peoples” of the world have a right to national self-determination except for the Jews! But that really does seem to be what the current Zionist punch line is suggesting.

Meanwhile, back in the world of reality, the Israeli government and its allies are pulling out all the propaganda stops in a frantic and thuggish effort to suppress both criticism and active resistance to Israeli policies with respect to the Palestinians. An important role in the current campaign is being played by the spectral threat of a “New Anti-Semitism” spearheaded by those defending Palestinian rights. (The actual anti-Semitism of Orban and his ilk are downplayed or ignored.) And in contriving this “new” kind of anti-Semitic threat, its promoters have shamelessly sought to wrap Israel in the mantle of universalist principles by invoking the Wilsonian language of “self-determination.”

The propagandists, useful idiots, fellow-travelers and true believers who talk this talk are throwing conceptual spaghetti at the wall in the hope that some of it sticks. It’s important we ensure that it doesn’t.

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About Joel Doerfler

Joel Doerfler is a long-time independent school teacher of history. He lives in New York.

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113 Responses

The right of self-determination – the right to establish within a geographic region an independent (and ideally secular and democratic) state of and for all people in and up to n-generations removed from that region – belongs to the people in and up to n-generations removed from that region.

In Palestine, that would be Palestinians of all tribes, peoples, cultures, ethnicities, nations, civilizations and, yes, even religions. (Not sure about dessert toppings or floor wax.)

In Palestine – or anywhere else in the world, for that matter – that would not be “the Jews” (as Zionists keep calling them) just as it would not be “the Muslims” or “the Homosexuals”.

There’s nothing anti-Semitic about denying “the Jews” a right to which they are not entitled.

It is a long comment, so I won’t repeat it hear. I will only repeat the 4th argument I found so striking:“Let us suppose that Jews have the right to sd as Jews. Australian Jews also have the right to sd as Australians, since they are residents of the territory. I, on the other hand, only have the right as a an Australian. (I am not a lesbian, I do not collect stamps, and I was expelled from the club for reasons I will not disclose here. – [PK: this is discussed in the other arguments]) Jews have two rights of sd, while the rest of us have only one. What justifies this inequity?”

On that same Mondoweiss webpage, @Eljay comments:“Self-determination applies to people of a geographic region. Palestinian is a geographic-based identity tied to the geographic region of Palestine. A Palestinian state should be the state of and for all people from the geographic region comprising the state. ………..
Jewish is a religion-based identity, not a geographic-based identity. It is not tied to a specific geographic region – it is based on religious conversion. A “Jewish State” is a religion-supremacist construct. The choice to hold the religion-based identity of Jewish does not comprise a “right” to establish a state primarily of and for people of that religion-based identity.”

These 2 arguments are unbeatable, and it beats me (pun intended) why nobody, no country, has ever shown the guts to make these simple statements, as well as what Doerfler describes above.

Even if a right to self-determination for “the Jews” within a nation-state were deemed correct, the question still remains — where should that state be located and how big need it be? Where is it shown/proved that the so-called Jewish right of self-determination necessarily means that they (or those among them who claim to exercise that right) have a right to seize by force of arms (a) all of Mandatory Palestine, or (b) all of Mandatory Palestine plus all of Jordan plus south Lebanon plus the Golan Heights; or (c) about 1/4 of pre-1967 Israel, perhaps a territory a small multiple of the size of New York City (a place of similar population). Leaving aside the “force of arms” problem, which is the right size and the right place? And is it antisemitic to ask this question? If I say, “the Jews of the world have a perfect right to self-determination within a nation-state of their own, excluding all others, upon land twice the size of NYC, but not in Palestine” have I committed an antisemitic act, a hate crime, a whatever-they-want-to-call-it?

Zionists always chant the right to a state for the Jews as if it is a right to THIS state (or the next, always bigger, one). Quite a leap!

If a Zionist could be got to agree that Palestinians have a right to a state of their own — inside Mandatory Palestine for reasons of recent occupation thereof — would that Zionist be faulted for saying as well that that Palestinian state would have to be small? If not, why should anyone else be faulted for saying the Jewish state should be much smaller than it is today?

the problem with Israel is it has nothing to do with self determination and everything to do with naked conquest. I will glady support jewish self determination in a legally formed jewish state. I will oppose naked conquest 11 out of ten times.

I agree very much that this was not a self-regarding action, one by which the agents did something affecting themselves so that it was not the business of anyone else. It was an other-regarding or other-determining action, affecting huge numbers of those who had no or no effective agency. The use of the word ‘self-determination’ is a scandal.

Where “self-determination” involves establishing a state, I find it very difficult to imagine a case in which it would be solely a self-regarding action.

The problems stemming from Brexit, and the position of the Russian speakers in the Baltic states are samples of the sort of issues that can arise from independence. Even if Tasmania or the Isle of Wight were to declare independence, that would still have noticeable effect on Australia and Britain.

The so-called right of self-determination was intended as an expression of support for those Third World countries/peoples fighting to throw off the yoke of European imperialism, an effort the US supported at the time for geostrategic reasons. It was never intended as a justification for Jewish European colonizers to occupy Palestine and subjugate the native population. It is the right of people to be free of an occupier, period. And who is the occupier in historic Palestine?

What about the right of self-determination of the Hutu’s and the Tutsi’s in Rwanda?

Given history, the Rwandan genocide, one wouldn’t want a repeat. It’s better to use the generally accepted geographical criterium for self-determinition/sovereignty: sovereignty rests with all people (i.e. humans) within the boundaries of the land, and these people have full equality.

It’s perfectly legitimate to argue this for Rwanda. For Palestine this is also a good and legitimate solution: one democratic state

Canada’s Independent Jewish Voices just held a meeting, and there was some discussion of a revision of our statement of principles. One man said it should include self-determination. I vehemently disagree. For one thing, if we support Palestinian self-determination, how can we say anything against Jewish self-determination?
Self-determination, while uncritically seen as a good thing (especially on the left) for a long time, has passed its sell-by date. There are — probably always have been — too many countries which contain a variety of ethnicities, religions, etc.
Self-determination used to mean, roughly, getting rid of colonial masters and running the country yourself. Now it seems mostly to mean that the country belongs to “us,” and the others – “them” – are here on suffrance. Nope. Every country should be a state of all its citizens.

Okay, chutzpah is one thing. But if there is going to be another parody-Zionist sock-puppet( and one which makes “Steve Grover” look like the third-rate hack-work he is), you’ll need something beyond chutzpah, you’ll need a get from the Mods.

Just looked up the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act link in Mr. Doerfler’s article. What b*lls?! If this legislation is passed, it means that there will have to been reference to a non-legally binding and deeply flawed IHRA definition when determining whether discrimination against one particular group has occurred. So what about e.g. black, Hispanic or Muslim people? Where are the non-legally binding definitions of what constitutes anti-black, anti-Hispanic or Islamophobic prejudice, which those considering any complaint from members of these groups must by law take into account? Would it be anti-Semitic to suggest that this is merely another example of Zionist exceptionalism?

The Zionist argument that denying Jews the right to “self-determination” (in the sense of a nation-state) is anti-Semitic is clearly not based on any universal principle. Zionists (at least as Zionists) do not care about all the small and not-so-small ethnic groups denied this right. They say: “The British, the French, the Germans, the Italians have nation-states; why not the Jews?” Implicitly this means that they consider that only the major European nations have the right to “self-determination” and that they claim for the Jews the status of such a major European nation. So there is an important element of European supremacism here. Therefore they associate denial of this right to the Jews with the view that Jews are not European but an alien Asiatic presence in Europe, and they associate that view with anti-Semitism. And in this they are correct, because classical European anti-Semites did indeed often take this view of Jews. So in terms of their archaic assumptions (absurd as they seem to us nowadays) their stance does make a sort of sense.

@Stephen Shenfield: NO !! Their assumption does NOT make any sense. The Brits, French, Germans are nationalities based on a geographical area.
“Jewish” is neither a nationality nor is it linked to any geographic are. The Jews in Britain have their self-determination in Britain, those in France do in France, etc.

STEPHEN SHENFIELD- ” I said that given the (absurd) assumptions the stance makes a sort of sense, that is, it has some measure of internal coherence.”

This is a very important point which I would like to expand upon briefly. I believe that something is logical if it is consistent with relevant assumptions/ideology/mythology, whereas, something is rational if it is consistent with empirical reality. They are not the same thing. One can be both logical and rational at the same time, but not necessarily so. As you say, absurd assumptions result in absurd conclusions logically arrived at. A significant point is the degree to which our media (news and entertainment) create the mythology upon which the news will be evaluated, hence, frame the debate and channel conclusions in the desired direction as determined by the elites, a critically important aspect of social control. It is very easy to get swept-up in the logic of propaganda.

Mind you, I don’t think that the argument would improve if it were stated as ‘self-determination is good enough for people living in Liechtenstein, so good enough for people who are Jewish’. Not that any satisfactory idea of national self-determination has ever been put forward by anyone or on anyone’s behalf.

Stating it as ‘self-determination is good enough for people living in Liechtenstein, so good enough for people who are Jewish’ gives the game away.

It is too obvious that “living in Liechtenstein” is a geographical feature, whereas “being Jewish” is religious/ethnic. The analogy fails straight away.

To sell the argument, the Zionist has to give the idea that there are ethnicities called “the British people” and “the French people”, and that these peoples found territories and agreed to set up states there. The Zionist ignores the reality that the states came first, and were set up by kings bashing both peasants and each other on the head with incredibly heavy swords.

Let us remember that in 1948, Palestine was 2/3 Arab and didn’t want a Jewish State on its soil. This is the stated reason Palestinians Arabs would not cooperate with the U.N. Palestinians did not believe a foreign body had the right to recommend partition against the will of the overwhelming majority of its native inhabitants. Arguments around self determination were central as newly arrived Jews were a minority and demanded a sovereign and separate entity.
It is most ironic that one peoples self determination was nullified and then through ethnic cleansing a new self determination was created that now demands to be enshrined. So in the case of Israel, only Jewish self determination is relevant, irregardless of whether Palestinians are in the majority or in the minority. This all relates to the basic idea that Zionism is racism. When only one group is seen as having basic rights; opposing rationalizations are used depending on demographics. Zionists then use different definitions of anti-Semitism. One where self determination is an evil if Jewish persons are in the minority and the other one as essential if they are in the majority.

“only Jewish self determination is relevant, irregardless “ pdxmuscle
This is from the Oxford dictionary:
Irregardless is sometimes incorrectly used instead of regardless, but is not usually considered correct in Standard English, as the negative prefix ir- merely duplicates the suffix -less and as such is redundant.

Keith’s point is the salient one, regarding the recent origins of the S-D term in the post WW2 anti-colonial struggles and the “winds of change” that blew through Africa. In this reading it is the Palestinians who merit and certainly need self determination against the Zionist colonisers of their land and their aggressive and accelerating conquest and exclusion of the indigenous Palestinians. This sort of mis-use and twisting of language runs right through the IHRA, where concepts that appear to be common sense and reasonable have been moulded to fit the “three Ds” (De-legitimisation, Double Standards and Demonisation) designed by Israel’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs to undermine BDS by labelling it as antisemitic. Re-read the IHRA “examples” and these three Ds stick out like a sore thumb.

I am not against Kurds, Basques, Cherokees, Tibetians, Palestinians, Chukchas, Tutsis, Hutus and everyone in between to have their own state. Unfortunately for them, Iraqis, Spaniards, Americans, Chinese, etc. may object.

“Or do they hate themselves and non-Zionist Jews?” Eljay
So Zionists hate their own selves and presumably their wives, children, boyfriends? That’s a mystery as in surveys Israelis score high on social and family support. Suicides are generally low and family life seems stable, comparably speaking. And yet, all this self-hate and hate of their own children. Well it’s a mystery I guess.

The statement at hand makes perfect sense to a vast majority of Americans, Canadians, Mexicans, Europeans and Russians. The Chinese are, as of now, completly ambivalent. Only jew haters, Israel and zionist haters think there is any amount of gaul involved in such a simple statement. But this is mondoweiss….

“While there is much that is inspirational about the idea of a “right” to national self-determination there is also much about the concept that is obscure and problematic.”

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure the ‘right’ to self-determination isn’t neccessarily a right to ‘national self-determination’. There is no ‘requirment’ for Basques or Kurds – or Jews – to have their own state, just the ability to ‘self-determine’ as a people. So you could say tha the Basques – who have significant regional autonomy, with language and cultural rights – enjoy self-determination as Basqes while also being citizens of Spain.

Regarding Jews, the question of whather they constitute a ‘people’ is by no means clear. They do not speak a common language, do not share a common place of origin (noone seriously buys the nonsense that they are all descended from Biblical Palestine), nor do they share any common cultural traditions, excepting those which are connected to religious practice. You might be able to make a case that Ashkenazi Jews, or Sephardic Jews, or indeed Israeli Jews, are a ‘people’, but Jews as a whole? Much less convincing.

In addition, as has been said, Jews’ ‘right’ to self-determination in Palestine comes at the great expense of the indigenous people, and violates the Palestinians’ right to self-determination. Therefore, it cannot be justified, unless of course you believe that some people are simply more impotant and more valuable than others. In other words, unless you are a Zionist.

Also, surely this whole ‘right to self-determination’ thing only works for people living in a particular territory? How can a Ukranian or American Jew from Kiev or New York have a right to ‘self-determine’ in a country half-way around the world?

|| Boris: ” How can a Ukranian or American Jew from Kiev or New York have a right to ‘self-determine’ in a country half-way around the world?”

The same right as a Cherokee living in Oklahoma has a right for a state in his ancestral lands in Georgia. ||

Geographic Palestine is not the “ancestral land” of all people in the world – citizens of actual homelands and actual ancestral lands all over the world – who have chosen to be Jewish.

And IMO a supremacist “Cherokee State” – a state not of and for all people living in and up to n-generations removed from the geographic region it comprises – would be as unjust and immoral a construct as a religion-supremacist “Jewish State” carved out of geographic Palestine (or any other region in the world).

First you define Jews as simply a religion, then you make idiotic arguments that you think are logical.

Second, I think Cherokees would rather have their own country, not being part of the United States. And they would rather have it in their ancestral places where the state of Georgia is now. I am sure Jimmy Carter would happily give them their land back.

A Cherokee living in Oklahoma should have and does have the right to live in Georgia but no one has the right to set up a sovereign Cherokee state in Georgia. Cherokee as individuals have, with genuine consent, accepted a place in the United States social contract as fully enfranchised citizens, and thus cannot claim sovereignty for themselves alone over a part of its territory. I would like to see the Palestinians, should they choose to consent, gain that much.

|| Boris: … The situation is not the same, as there is presently another nation that was in Palestinian before Palestinians. … ||

Palestine was inhabited at the time Zionists decided to steal, occupy and colonize it. Those inhabitants and their predecessors for generations – and not Jewish citizens of homelands all over the world – were Palestine’s indigenous population.

|| … The facts clearly show that the Jews are the Cherokees of the Middle East, and Israel is a shining example to indigenous people everywhere of native people reestablising their national state. ||

The actual facts show that Zionists are hateful and immoral people who believe hypocritically that evil is virtue when Jews do it unto others.

There is a legitimate social contract in the United States, with near universal consent and no horrible features such as massive disfranchisement of officially different rights on the basis of ancestry. Therefore white people are legitimate residents in Georgia. The contrast with the area under Israeli sovereign power is clear enough.

Please do a bit more research into the status of federally recognized Indian tribes in the US. These tribes are condsidered sovereign nations within the Unite States and the relationship between the US give and the tribe is considered nation to nation. The Indian citizens are all citizens of the US, but they have collective rights different from other US citizens. Reservation land is held in trust by the federal govt and individuals may not own or sell land. Tribal membership is decided by the leadership and may be based upon ancestry or connection.
People who live on reservation land but are not members of the tribe generally do not have tribal membership and have no vote on matters within the reservation. The tribe which developed the Foxwoods casino purchased land and then put in trust with federal govt to establish a reservation equivalent. More land was purchased and the area expanded.

The old stories say that there were people in Palestine before Abraham and his family arrived from Iraq. Their descendants kept on living in Palestine even when parts of Palestine were Jewish kingdoms. And the Palestinians seem to be descended from the original inhabitants. They are certainly descended from people who lived in Palestine for the past 1300 years or so. That is a pretty strong claim to be indigeneity.

Ashkenazi Jews, on the other hand, cannot demonstrate indigeneity.

They were people from Europe who drove out the indigenes, just as people from Europe drove out the Cherokee.

But even if the Ashkenazi Jews are descended from people who lived in Palestine, that does not give them the right to drive out other people, or to set up a state without the consent of the other people.

My comparison of Jews to Cherokees and other Native Americans is based on comparison of these nations’ historical events.

Jews were expelled by Romans from Judea. Native tribes were driven off their lands.

Jews were despised and murdered by their neighbors. Native Americans had experienced genocide.

DNA is a useful tool and is used in the research of history. But, as Elizabeth Warren found out, most importantly is sticking to your people through thick and thin.

As I wrote before, although borned in Ukraine, my DNA is similar to the DNA of people from Lebanon. The difference between me and, for example, a member of Hizballah is that my ancestors remained Jewish. I guess they were tougher than the ones that converrd to other religions.

|| Boris: … Jews were expelled by Romans from Judea. … As I wrote before, although borned in Ukraine, my DNA is similar to the DNA of people from Lebanon. … ||

Congratulations! :-) But discovering that you’re Lebanese instead of Judean doesn’t change the fact that the religion-based identity of Jewish does not comprise a right:
– to a religion-supremacist “Jewish State” in as much as possible of geographic Palestine;
– to do unto others acts of injustice and immorality.

1. Jewish identity is not (only) based on religion. Try repeating it a couple of times, may be you will understand it.

2. My DNA being similar to people from Lebanon does not mean that I am Lebanese. 23andme had identified me as 98% Askenazi Jew. So, my DNA is a proof that European Jews came from the Middle East. Capiche? Try reading this paragraph again, and again, and again… before posting more stupidity.

|| … 2. My DNA being similar to people from Lebanon does not mean that I am Lebanese. 23andme had identified me as 98% Askenazi Jew. So, my DNA is a proof that European Jews came from the Middle East. Capiche? Try reading this paragraph again, and again, and again… before posting more stupidity. ||

The fact that your DNA is similar to people from Lebanon doesn’t change the fact that the religion-based identity of Jewish does not comprise a right:
– to a religion-supremacist “Jewish State” in as much as possible of geographic Palestine;
– to do unto others acts of injustice and immorality. Capiche?

Try reading this paragraph again, and again, and again… before posting more stupidity.

I always treat info coming from Jon with respect but what the reservation-dwelling Native Americans have doesn’t seem very like sovereignty to me. There seems to be an awful lot of subjection to US law. However that may be, I agree that it is possible for full and genuine sovereignty to be created for the Cherokee in Georgia. I don’t think that as US citizens they have a right to this but the time might come when it seems to everyone concerned to be the best and fairest thing. It also might happen that everyone decides that it is fairest and best in all the circumstances prevailing now that there should be a 2ss with a Jewish and Palestinian state. But I don’t, as you know, think that this is something to which people who are Jewish have an absolute moral right.

Surely most people, Jewish and other, regard as Jewish those who either practise the religion of Judaism or are sufficiently related in blood to some who practised it – with some disagreement about what happens when someone steps outside community norms, such as by adopting another religion.

Ok, as I pointed out before, you want to control the definition of who is Jewish, and you want to limit it to only religious Jews. … ||

Wrong again, Boris, my old “DNA being similar to people from Lebanon” chum. I do not want, I do not try, I do not even pretend to “control the definition of who is Jewish”.

|| … Well, majority of the Jews decided otherwise … ||

This is good for the “majority of the Jews”, but bad for any Jew whose Jewish identity the “majority of the Jews” decides to strip from him.

Now that you’ve identified who really “controls the definition of who is Jewish” – and we both agree that it’s not me – you should make sure that those people don’t abuse that power and harm the “minority of the Jews”.

|| … so go and ___ yourself. ||

Yes, thank you, I will go and treat myself to a nice glass of Scotch. :-)

Hughes
The tribes are treated as both nations and dependents. The rights to the land are recognized through Congress not the states within which they reside. The tribes have their own givers and police and enforce their own laws. They are not fully independent states, but have some restrictions on power. The tribes certainly view themselves as sovereign entities. It’s a complex issue that balances the rights of Indians as US citizens and the rights of Indians as members of a distinct nation. Each tribe sets it own membership rules and non members living on Indian land are subject to a different set of laws and are not granted citizenship.
“The idea that tribes have an inherent right to govern themselves is at the foundation of their constitutional status — the power is not delegated by congressional acts. Congress can, however, limit tribal sovereignty. Unless a treaty or federal statute removes a power, however, the tribe is assumed to possess it.”https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribal_sovereignty_in_the_United_States

Boris’s DNA shows he has similar ancestry to modern Levantine Arabs.
Boris claims that this makes him, and others with similar DNA, indigenous to the Levant.
So modern Levantine Arabs are also indigenous to the Levant.
Palestinians are modern Levantine Arabs.
So Palestinians are indigenous.

This sounds nice, but first you have to decide who “your people” are. That is, you have to decide what principle you are going to base your loyalty on.

For example, I don’t normally think about “my people”, but I do think I owe more loyalty to Australian society than to Bolivian society. My reason for this preference is based on a Hobbes/Locke/MHughes social contract idea. It is Australians, organised in Australian society, that produce and transport most of the food I eat, that provide water, electricity, roads, health care, libraries, education for my son, and a fair amount of personal safety. In return I pay taxes, vote (compulsory here) and try not to destroy the society beyond reasonable limits.

Since you call Mooser (who depends on American society) a traitor, I’m going to assume that you think he owes a duty of loyalty to Jews even if they are not Americans. It seems unlikely that you can base this on a social contract idea. Can I ask why you think he owes that duty?

so often when i read allusions to tribal/cult/ethnic loyalties in these comment threads i feel a sort of relief i’m not in one. my own family is hard enough to navigate, the cousins are rather distant. but it’s almost strange, hard and difficult imagining owing obligations to some huge group. or even (in the jewish sense) a mini huge group of “only” a mere 12 million or whatever. i just can’t relate. in my sphere i have a devotion to not even 50 people in a lineal familia sense (which includes close forever friends). in a global sense millions, and in my heart i am palestinian and 9 generations american. but this tribal thing — the obligation via ethnicity? not really getting that, especially if i do not share their ideology. what is the point? survival? i would totally bond with those i align with in my global community before aligning w/someone i shared ethnicity with if it came down to a principle, like human rights.

|| RoHa: Boris’s DNA shows he has similar ancestry to modern Levantine Arabs.
Boris claims that this makes him, and others with similar DNA, indigenous to the Levant.
So modern Levantine Arabs are also indigenous to the Levant.
Palestinians are modern Levantine Arabs.
So Palestinians are indigenous. ||

Annie- You are an American, unattached to any ancient bonds, mildly attached to familial bonds and exuberantly attached to friends and like thinking humans across the world. Nothing against that. But one should not delude oneself into thinking that the amnesia implied by Americanism is the cure all for mankind. For after all, since 1968 white Americans, the particularly subspecies of Americans of which you are a specimen, have voted each and every time (with the possible exception of 1996 when it was a statistical tie) for the regressive Republican candidate for president. If amnesia were the cure then this regressive attitude would not be the rule. (As far as categorizing you as a white american: Black americans, as a rule, would not boast about their detachment from any wider group. Just think of Kwame Toure emphasizing his African heritage.)

The 1924 immigration act was decidedly racist, riding the wave of eugenic theories, asserting the superiority of north Europeans and excluding the others, including Jews. Go to the Congressional arguments regarding the laws and see if there was no antisemitism involved in the discussions. If you think there was only antisemitism involved you are wrong. If you think there was no antisemitism involved you are also wrong. The act was racist against many groups. It was key to the immigration of Jews to Palestine increasing the Jewish population there from 85,000 in 1920 to 400,000 in 1939: creating the critical mass necessary for the battle to come to be fought after WWII.

Just because the Congress and white americans were racists (in 1924 and in other years since) against many different groups, therefore the Jews should cease and desist from calling the 1924 act and its enactors antisemitic? Not really. They were antisemitic, among other hatreds.

“It should be Eljay who controls the definition of who is Jewish, but, since it isn’t, what definition have the majority of Jews decided on?”

Anytime “Boris” think the Jews are a “nation”, all he has to do is one simple test: Send them a Jewish tax invoice, or a Jewish draft notice, or a Jewish subpoena. Or go and arrest one for breaking Jewish law.

But it’s very important to “Boris” to prove that Jews are an irreconcilable and alien nation. That’s what got him out of the Ukraine.

|| wondering jew: Annie- You are an American, unattached to any ancient bonds, mildly attached to familial bonds and exuberantly attached to friends and like thinking humans across the world. Nothing against that. But one should not delude oneself into thinking that the amnesia implied by Americanism is the cure all for mankind. … ||

Better a world full of people like annie whose bonds are built on a belief in universal justice, equality and human rights than a world full of people like Zionists (and other supremacists) whose bonds are built on a belief in “ancient” / family / tribe / culture that:
– over-rides justice, equality and human rights; and
– demands unwavering support for whatever evil the “ancient” / family / tribe / culture deems “necessary”.

“”Annie” You are an American, unattached to any ancient bonds, mildly attached to familial bonds” The ever charming and chivalrous “Wondering Jew”

Gee “Yonah”, don’t you think the word “goyim covers it without going into all that detail about “Annie’s” moral, intellectual and spiritual deficiencies, compared with, well, us? She’s strictly a parvenu, whereas we have a noble lineage!

|| Mooser: … But it’s very important to “Boris” to prove that Jews are an irreconcilable and alien nation. That’s what got him out of the Ukraine. ||

And if Jews / the “Jewish State” ever fail him, he can always whip out his “my DNA is similar to the DNA of people from Lebanon” card, drive a few of the locals out of their homes (and into the sea) and start over in his brand-new “ancient homeland”.

So what you are really upset about, Yonah, is not that the US Congress thought that Eastern Europeans were dodgy, trouble-making, scum, but that Congress included Eastern European Jews in that category.

“But it’s very important to “Boris” to prove that Jews are an irreconcilable and alien nation. ”

It’s rather amusing to see the way that Boris and his ilk put a great deal of effort into assuring us that Jews are special and different from the rest of us, and then complain about being singled out and treated differently.

I get your aversion to the “Tribal thing” but you say your palestinian in your heart. You do realize how strongly tribal the majority of palestinian culture is, unless I’m just assuming you would know this.

I couldn’t give an expert answer, but I’d hazard a guess that it does not mean a member of a certain religous group having the right to displace the indigenous people in a faraway country, simply on account of being a member of a certain religious group.

Locke c. 1690 argued that conquest can rightfully be resisted as long as it is enforced violently and goes beyond the limits of what we would call post-war occupation. He mentions the Greeks’ right to expel the Turks, evidently thinking that there was no real social contract in that part of the world. This is one of the ideas that went into the mix from which later ideas of national self-determination emerged – but the right to resist ongoing conquest does not cover every situation of which we might think. What if the Turks had succeeded in drawing their Greek citizens – you might say they did eventually attempt something like this, too late for success – into a society where they were enfranchised citizens fully represented in an empire-wide parliament. Once this system was operating with general Greek participation the right to resist or even to self-determine their way out of Turkish rule would havd been at least more questionable.
What the Palestinians deserve is enfranchised citizenship in a sovereign state without being forced to move away from their homes to obtain it.

“Also, surely this whole ‘right to self-determination’ thing only works for people living in a particular territory? How can a Ukranian or American Jew from Kiev or New York have a right to ‘self-determine’ in a country half-way around the world?”
@MDM, by most, your question would be perceived as rhetorical; by a minority, it would not be. This cuts to the heart of so-called “religious Zionism”; and provides cover, too, for the convenient but entirely spurious charge that opposition to Zionism represents an assault on Jews collectively since (there being no homogenous Jewish ethnicity or “race” in the anthropological sense) the determinant of whether or not someone is and identifies as a Jew is primarily one of matrilineal religious heritage. If Zionism is criticised, questioned or de-legitimised, the critic is thereby attacking the essence of Jewishness itself as well as opposing God’s will.
At its conception and in its 19th Century infancy, Zionism was a secular political ideology; “religious Zionism”, as refined and articulated by Rabbi Rav Kook, post-dated these roots and was a rationalisation serving further to motivate and internationalise the movement for the colonial settlement of Palestine. In colloquial terms, Rabbi Kook’s theological message was that God had given the land of Palestine to the Jews in “perpetuity” (until Judgment Day) and reclaiming it – including by emigrating to it – was the will of God and the duty of Jews everywhere. Furthermore, those who made Aliyah for secular reasons were unwittingly doing God’s bidding by settling the land.
Kook’s handy spiritual “gloss” on a pre-existing political ideology thus forged a blunt but powerful weapon that is wielded indiscriminately by Zionists of both “religious” and of more-than-ordinarily-secular stripes to bludgeon and silence opposition.

If I am not mistaken, “self-determination” made its appearance at the 1919 Paris Peace conference, as a ‘principle’ extracted from US Pres. Wilson’s “14 Points”. It was meant to be used to disentangle the ‘nationalities’ and redraw the boundaries of Europe.

Maybe because the Mid-East colonies of the winners and losers of WW1 had to be sorted out, too,(‘Mandates”) and the Zionists had extracted promises from the British and Americans (Chaim Weizman-Balfour letter) which encouraged Zionism in Palestine, the rhetoric of “self-determination” began to be applied in a situation, Palestine and Zionism, where it was pretty much irrelevant. (Not that it proved very useful or practical in Europe, either.)

@Mooser
The term “Mandate” was dreamt up at the post WW1 Versailles Peace Conference as a replacement for the term”Colony” largely as a worthless token bung to native populations who had contributed so much to the European Allies war efforts against Germany and lost so much in terms of lives.health and livelyhoods. It also served to assuage the guilt of the colonial powers over the horrendous abuse of native populations particularly in Africa throughout the war. The Mandates were supposed to be administered as ” a ” sacred trust of Civilisation under the auspices of the League of Nations” and have been described as “Imperialism`s New Clothes”. The new clothing created the impression of native populations progressively “self determining” in their own “countries” under the “tuition” of ” civilised powers” whilst all the time allowing the so called “civilised powers” the continued luxury of sucking them dry in terms of mineral and agricultural riches.
The same principle applied in theory to the Palestine Mandate but behind the scenes as we know the Zios were hard at work engineering the export of European Jews to Palestine.So a completely separate and cynical enterprise was at work which had SFA to do with native “self determination” but all to do with a bunch of unhinged fanatical Zealots deliberately stealing and aggressively colonising (not mandating) the land of the native population.. Britain largely through the creation and development of the CommonWealth has arguably gone some way towards repairing the damage (to put it mildly) which they were responsible for in their ex – colonies. With regards to the Palestine Mandate the Balfour Declaration , which was nothing more nor less than a Freemason type handshake between two “brothers”, the die was cast and subsequent attempts by non- Brotherhood British politicians to undo the damage by controlling and limiting Jewish immigration were always destined to fail. Because America (led by a narcissistic freak or otherwise ) has long been seen as the arbiter of a solution, albeit totally bought and bent by the US Zionist Lobby , should not obscure the fact that Britain has a residual responsibility for honouring the “sacred trust” which was granted to them in the form of the Palestine Mandate.

All the above of course is the core belief of what is described as the “Labour Left” who feel strongly that Britain betrayed that “trust” to the Palestinians and that Britain should be at the forefront of reversing the barbarities of the Zionist Colonisation. All of which of course is Anti-Semitic,Anti – IRHAitic or whatever.

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